


A Life Worse Than

by Annwyd



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Angst, Dark, Dreams, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-11
Updated: 2011-11-11
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:06:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annwyd/pseuds/Annwyd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Since the Joining, Natia has had to give up her old nightmares." The Warden contemplates broodmothers, the lot of casteless dwarves, and what her experiences with the Blight have taught her. Implications of a Zevran romance; dark topics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Life Worse Than

Since the Joining, Natia has had to give up her old nightmares. Gone are the recurring dreams of her mother's recriminations emerging from the mouth of a wasted skeleton, the images of having to turn a dull blade on friends at Beraht's command. They've been replaced by the whispers of darkspawn and the terrible picture of the Archdemon summoning the horde. She hasn't thought much about whether this is better or worse, because she is a practical dwarf, and it's her job now to stop the Blight for the sake of a people who treat her at least a little better than other dwarves ever did.

But the night after she puts the crown on that nugfucker Bhelen and walks out of Orzammar again a little buoyed by the hope that her sister will have a better life, that maybe the ambitious bastard will be practical enough (like her!) to make things better for the casteless, she gets a very special reprieve.

Natia dreams of the first girl she kissed, a thief called Temeca who dallied with her while they were both holed up in a cramped hovel along an alley in Dust Town. Temeca was caught a few days later and joined the Legion of the Dead to avoid _actual_ (or at least immediate) execution, so it's funny to think of her now. Natia has usually let things like that simply go in the past, and it was easy enough when she never saw Temeca again. But the dream of that kiss isn't exactly a perfect memory...

When it really happened, the nugs running along the dirty walls just scratched and squeaked. In the dream, they whisper in Hespith's voice: "First day they come and catch everyone..."

The other woman's lips turn tainted, and tentacles reach in from the corners.

Natia wakes up in her tent wondering what Laryn of House Branka looked like once, a long time ago, and how many friends lost to the Legion of the Dead ended up looking like she did in the end. She thinks of the many times she was tempted to join the Legion, the handful of times she actually would have if not for the fact that Rica still needed her.

Now is not the time to be thinking such things. Now is the time to be the Warden, not Natia Brosca of Dust Town. All the same, when she emerges from her tent, she's glad it's Zevran waiting for her there, because he's the only one who has an inkling of what it was like to be Natia Brosca of Dust Town--she's gotten the impression on more than one occasion that being Zevran Arainai of Antiva City was not entirely dissimilar. But now, what haunts her is something even he can't understand. She wonders if any of them could. Maybe Alistair, in thirty years, but certainly not Alistair now.

Zevran rises to meet her. "If you wish for help sleeping, my dear, you need only to ask."

"Actually," she says, "this time I need help thinking."

"Ah, well. _There_ I cannot help you."

"It's all right," she says. She doesn't see the echo of the fight against the Broodmother in his eyes. All battles are the same to him, as they once were to her. So all she says is, "Have you ever thought it might be nice? To live in a world where there's no such thing as a fate worse than death. No Taint. No broodmothers. Just people who get to stay themselves from their first breath until their last."

"No," he says. "It would make what I do rather more difficult to live with, I suspect. But that might not be so bad."

"No point in dwelling on it," she says. But dwell she does.


End file.
